5 Best Heavy Music Festivals With… Thy Art Is Murder

By
Emily Swanson |

October 23, 2015

Photo by Thomas Savage

Fresh from their own headline shows alongside Aversions Crown, Feed Her To The Sharks, and Colossvs, Thy Art Is Murder have made trekking the globe their business, and business is good. Damn good. The boys from Sydney have spent the past few years destroying their fair share of stages the world over, and they’ve popped up at more than a few international festivals along the way. We hit up guitarist and former BLUNT foodie columnist Andy Marsh to give us his thoughts on five of the best heavy fests around the world. Better add these ones to the bucket list.

Andy Marsh’s Top Five Heavy Festivals Around The World

1. Soundwave, Australia

We’ve only done Soundwave once as a band, but I’ve done it a few times working for other bands. It’s the facility, the organisation, the crowds are sick, the catering is sick, the backline is sick – everything is sick!

2. Download Festival, UK

Download definitely has the best catering that I’ve ever had a festival. We did that in the UK last year and it was mental. There were like these chocolate tart things and I would have had about eight of them and nearly died.

3. With Full Force, Germany

This one’s awesome. They just give a shit in a way that’s different – it’s genuine. The fans definitely give a shit too, I don’t know how else to put it. They’re passionate, they’re educated about the culture of metal, everyone’s there to have a good time, and they like to drink beer, obviously.

4. Graspop, Belgium

I think we might have done Graspop twice now, and it’s massive. I think the last time I was there I was watching Slipknot or Black Sabbath or something at midnight and it was just insane. Like 100,000 people just going nuts for metal.

5. Pukkelpop, Belgium

We’d never played Pukkelpop until a couple of months ago, and it’s definitely not a metal festival. The backstage was awesome and had all these really cool orange fire lamp things, and all the people were really – I don’t want to say free-spirited, I’m not a hippy and I don’t give a shit about hippies, but everyone was super friendly. I mean, no one knows who I am at a dance festival, so I’m just walking around watching different acts and getting in line like a normal person because I wasn’t into the catering that day, and I just kept meeting people. It was people from all over the world who had travelled there to go to this festival. They were all super nice, all there to have a really good time, and it was sick. With all the different stages, it was a really cool layout for a festival that I’d never seen before. A lot of the stages had these gang plank walkways from backstage to backstage backing onto each other, so if you wanted to, once you were back there you could hustle from stage to stage without having to trek for ages, which was sick.